


Were It Not That I Have Bad Dreams

by magneato



Category: Hornblower (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-25 04:21:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/948566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magneato/pseuds/magneato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place sometime during the course of The Duchess and the Devil when Archie is still recovering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Were It Not That I Have Bad Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> I have no excuse for this. I just really wanted a reason to use the quote "were it not that I have bad dreams" because Archie and Shakespeare.

He was on board the Indy; the sea breeze whispering through his curls, the pleasant warmth of sunlight seeping through his jacket to collect on bare arms. He did not possess a poetic mind, arithmetic being more to his taste. However, had he been a Blake or Byron he might have noted the lyric quality to the crash of the waves or the flap of the sails. As it were, he did feel there was something quite peculiar about the Indy. He simply could not place where precisely the peculiarity lay. He closed his eyes for the briefest of moments allowing this as yet unknown, though not entirely disagreeable, feeling to wash over him. The air was still, yet there was a breeze. The ship was sailing, yet there was no one at the helm. The world was quite – yet there was incoherent shouting. Shouting? Horatio’s eyes flew open, the dream slipping from his mind like sand with the receding tide. His eyes darted about for the source of the commotion and came to a rest on the bed before him. Or rather, the figure in the bed before him.

“Archie? Archie!” He leapt from his seat, crossing the distance to Archie’s side in a single step. “It’s alright” he soothed, taking Archie gently by the shoulders, steadying his convulsing form. “Only a dream, Archie. It’s only a dream.” 

Archie’s shudders began to subside, his breathing slowly returning to a steady rate. Eyelids fluttered open gentle as butterfly wings, but the eyes were not springtime and beauty leaned to fly. They were cold terror, like a biting winter wind that chills the blood and cuts to the core. 

“I was having a fit wasn't I?” Archie asked quietly, though his tone said he needed no answer. The terror had gone from his eyes now. They had taken on a new face of winter; dead, but not emotionless. 

Horatio gave a small, apologetic nod. 

Archie heaved a resigned, frustrated sigh and turned over onto his side, away from Horatio.

“Maybe it’s just Spain. Maybe they’ll go away when we’re back on the Indy, free from this prison” Horatio suggested hopefully. 

“Did I not have fits on the Indy as well” Archie asked bitterly. “No, ‘the world is a prison in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons,’ my mind being amongst the worst.” 

“Archie, you mustn't talk like that.”

“No? And why not? It is the truth, Horatio. Thoughts must be the sturdiest of prisons, for I have yet to escape them.”

Horatio didn't know what to say, he never did when Archie got like this. ‘But you must say something to ease his mind’ he told himself. So he placed a reassuring hand on Archie’s shoulder and spoke to his friends still turned away face. “We know ourselves better than we know anything. If there’s one prison we can find the weakness in, learn the escape rout of, it is our own mind.” 

“And if I do not know myself?” It was whispered so quite Horatio half believed he’d imagined it. 

“Well if you don’t, I do” he stated with conviction. “And I can tell you that you are one of the bravest men I've had the privilege of knowing. And the dearest friend I've ever had. Archie, if it hadn't been for you I don’t know if I’d have made it through those early days on Justinian. And when I returned from that retched ordeal with the French merchant ship? Your smile was the most welcoming sight. It let me know I’d come back home. My men need your help to survive, but I need you.”

The room was quiet, not even the fire dared to crackle until Archie turned to face Horatio and the silence was broken. “And I need you” he replied evenly, as if stating a fact which Horatio should have already known. 

“I am here. And I am not going anywhere” he said with a light smile, gesturing to the bared window.

Archie gave a small laugh. A pale ghost of what it had once been, to be sure, but it was a start.


End file.
